The Sarus Crane is the largest flighted bird in the world at up to 6ft tall for an adult male. I ended up creeping through a farmers pepper plantation to get this shot, much to the amusement of the school children.

The children and our tuk-tuk driver were fascinated by what we were doing there and joined us on the viewing platform to look at the Sarus Crane. We hope that we inspired them to protect this endangered bird for the future.

We returned the motorbike after one day, vowing never to rent one again. But we still had to go and see the cranes and in a moment of madness hired a tuk-tuk to take us 1.5hrs on bumpy, dusty, dangerous roads to Along Preng. As soon as we fetched up there these school children came cycling along.

Kampot has a lovely, laid back atmosphere with some great bars and restaurants on the river front. It is also the place where the world famous Kampot Pepper is grown - used by discerning chefs everywhere (now including yours truly).

In Ang Trepang Thmor we had very distant views of about 20 Sarus Crane but we heard that there were more to be seen in the south of the country so we headed down to this place, Kampot to organise a trip out to see them.

Our final birding trip, organised by the excellent Sam Veasna Centre in Siem Reap, was to a remote area in the north of Cambodia called Tmatboey. Here we stayed in accommodation provided by the local community and did some wonderful bird watching. On this particular morning we got up at 4.30am to be in position to see the endangered Giant Ibis. Here is the sun rising through the trees. We must be mad!

One of the many children selling drinks, postcards, books and all manner of trinkets. Some of them are 'rented out' by their parents for $1 a day to temple guards who then pocket all the proceeds. This girl was working at her family's food stall and was trying to sell us a bracelet but didn't seem to mind us not buying one when we chose to buy a cold drink from her mother instead.She gave me a lovely smile for the photo.